


work it harder, make it better

by townshend



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, Tadashi is an AI, This is pretty messed up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/townshend/pseuds/townshend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiro was going to use this book for something. Not microbots - those didn't need AI, needed to stay shelved. Not a fighter bot. He'd start by coding a personality he knew inside and out. Something he didn't have to creatively make up as he went along, but something whose parameters were already starkly laid out in his mind.</p><p>Hiro was going to make Tadashi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [14112](https://archiveofourown.org/users/14112/gifts).



> There's some vague messing with time in this, just pretend that Hiro hadn't set himself up in Tadashi's lab before re-making Baymax at the end and we'll be good.
> 
> This is based on some rad fanart by scaggles on tumblr, which you can find [here](http://scaggles.tumblr.com/post/108602863854/cause-we-can-be-immortals-in-the-marvel-comics)!

Understandably, everyone expected Hiro to continue his work on the microbots when he started classes at SFIT - but he laughed a little, nervously, and said maybe the world wasn't quite ready for microbots just yet. There were too many things he needed to work out, too many safeguards that clearly needed to be put in place. He could figure out how to implement them, of course, but he wasn't sure he was mentally prepared to do it just yet. So for now, shelved they would go.

Nobody had been in the (affectionately titled) "Nerd Lab" the day Hiro decided to clean out Tadashi's lab and take it over. He was thankful for it. He'd had a lot of time to deal with his brother's death, and work through some of his emotions, but it was still a wound that was fresh and raw and complicated. Moving Tadashi's things was something he hadn't dared do at home - so doing it here seemed rough. At the same time, he didn't want to leave the space unused, and if anybody was going to take it over, it needed to be him.

Tadashi's computer wasn't here - it was tucked away in a bag back home - but everything else was. Tools, spare parts, discarded components that hadn't made it into Baymax's final design. There was a thin layer of dust on the tables and surfaces. Hiro stood there in the doorway for a moment, his backpack half-slung on his shoulder, a bucket of cleaning supplies in hand, and stared at it, trying to memorize the way it looked with the soft afternoon light filtering in through the window. He wouldn't change much, but the way he and Tadashi worked was different, and eventually things would change. Especially once he got into the swing of things.

He breathed out a sigh, let his bag drift towards the ground, and crossed the room to set the bucket on the table. Hiro dusted in silence for about ten minutes before he realized he needed music, and pulled out his computer to pull up 8tracks and find something marginally interesting.

With upbeat music, the job was a bit more palatable. He came to the bookshelf Tadashi kept on the far side of the room, and he dusted there idly. Normally, he wouldn't worry about being so clean - but there was something about this space that made him feel like he needed to keep the dust off. Maybe because it was a reminder that Tadashi hadn't been here disrupting things, keeping the dust from settling. Maybe because, logically, it was better anyway for robotics to have a dust-free station. Even if he could be cluttery, he always made sure he had a good environment for _building_.

He dusted, not really paying attention to the books on the shelf - until he came to a book slightly pulled out from the rest, as if it had been referenced frequently. He looked over it with curiosity, his hand holding the dust cloth slowing and then stopping, skidding against the spine of the book. The letters down the spine read "Advanced Artificial Intelligence - Making Programming Natural, Personable, and Lifelike", written by a Dr. Hironobu Kitose. Of course… Tadashi must have used this when he'd programmed Baymax. Hiro pulled out the book, interested. He'd made plenty of robots, but he'd never programmed an artificial intelligence before, and the new challenge prompted interest in him. He could probably learn a lot just by looking over the code Tadashi had written for Baymax, but… something about reading the book Tadashi had read felt intensely important.

He dropped the dust cloth and slid down to the floor, cross-legged, leaning back against the bookshelf. The wooden shelves pressed in slightly uncomfortable places, and it wasn't at all an even surface, but he hardly noticed. Cracking open the cover of the book, Hiro stopped, noticing an inscription written in the inside cover.

_Tadashi--_

_Here's the book you were looking for. Don't worry about returning it - consider it a gift._

_Best of luck with Baymax. I hope this book can help. I know if anybody can do this, it's you._

_-Prof. Callaghan_

Hiro snapped the book shut for a moment in disgust, his head lolling back against a lower shelf of books. _Callaghan_ , he thought. Callaghan had given Tadashi this book. Callaghan had supported Tadashi's creation of Baymax, and then Callaghan had been the reason Tadashi had died. He was the reason why Tadashi had looked at Hiro with earnest panic in his eyes, shouting over the roar of the fire _Somebody has to help_ \--

He let out a sigh, and put the book down beside him. After a moment, he got to his feet, bent to pick up the book, and crossed the room to shut his laptop. It was in the midst of a song, Brendon Urie in the middle of crooning, _"haven't you people ever heard of--"_ when Hiro closed the lid, cutting him off abruptly. He shoved his laptop back into his bag, and then, after only a moment's hesitation, slid the book in after it.

The lab was clean enough. Wasabi would definitely tell him it wasn't, but only if Hiro asked. He'd had enough of this room for today, with its memories and ghosts and soft glowing sunlight.

Hiro took a trolley home, and he was back just for the after-work rush in the cafe. He ducked in, through the growing line of customers, and around the back to the staircase that led to their home. The second floor held Cass' room, the kitchen, the living room. Upstairs was his and Tadashi's-- _his_ space.

Mochi was laying on Hiro's bed, and when he came up the stairs and into the bedroom, he swung his backpack towards the bed without thinking. Mochi was almost hit and sprang backwards, mewling unhappily. "Oh--" Hiro laughed a little, then slid down onto the edge of his bed, "sorry Mochi." He reached out to pet the cat, but Mochi growled, swatting at him, claws just catching Hiro's skin. "Ow," Hiro complained, pulling his hand away. Mochi hopped from the bed, crossing the room towards Tadashi's side. At the same moment, there was an initializing sound and the small red box just ten feet away opened. The sound of Baymax's inflation began. Hiro sighed, watching the process drag out, already holding out his hand.

When Baymax was fully deployed, he looked around the room with curiosity before settling his gaze on Hiro.

"Hello. I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion. I was alerted to your need for medical attention when you said 'ow'. On a scale of one to ten, how would you--"

"It's just a cat scratch, Baymax," Hiro said, shaking his hand a little. "It's okay."

Baymax was quiet for a moment, surveying Hiro's wound. Finally: "Cat scratches can be dangerous. There is a (PERCENTAGE HERE) chance of infection. I will disinfect and bandage the wound."

'Percentage here'? Hiro sighed. Tadashi had apparently missed crossing a few ts. "I don't need it to be--"

Baymax was already working, spraying out a sudden mist of liquid on the small red scratches across Hiro's palm. It burned, and Hiro jerked away, hissing. "Ow--"

Baymax tilted his head, confused. "I am already treating your wounds."

"What? No-- I know, it just--"

Baymax retrieved a bandage, quickly wrapping it around Hiro's hand. Hiro sighed. At this point, he realized how utterly useless it was to argue with Baymax. He was going to do what he was going to do.

That was the way Tadashi had programmed him.

With his hand returned to him, Hiro reached into his bag, puling out the book he'd taken from Tadashi's lab room. He cracked it open, quick to flip past the inscription inside the front cover.

Soon, Hiro realized there was other writing inside - not Callaghan's flowing cursive. This was a precise, sharp-edged lettering cramped around pages where there was no textbook text and curving around diagrams.

It was Tadashi's handwriting.

Hiro sucked in a breath he realized was shuddering. He slowly set the open book down and thought he was going to need to be a lot more relaxed to get through this without breaking down.

Who ever heard of someone getting emotional over a textbook? He sighed at himself, moved to slide off his bed, and stopped when he was face-to-bulged-belly with Baymax. Hiro sat there for a moment, his nose pressed into Baymax's vinyl body, and almost laughed.

"Hiro," Baymax said, as if reminding him. "I cannot deactivate until you tell me you're satisfied with your care."

"Oh yeah?" Hiro asked, scooting back a bit. "I didn't know."

Baymax tilted his head. "I thought you were aware of my functionality."

"It was sarcasm," Hiro said, frowning up at him with mock-irritation. "Tadashi didn't program you with that, either?"

"Tadashi programmed me with over 10,000 medical procedures," Baymax said. Hiro thought it sounded like Baymax was proud about that, but it was probably something Hiro was projecting. It seemed unlikely that Tadashi had programmed pride into Baymax. Hiro glanced back at the book again, wondering.

"I'm satisfied with my care," he murmured, trying not to sound too defeated. Baymax turned, then, lumbering back towards his charging station and deflating.

Hiro decided to take a shower and change into his pajamas before starting. He curled up into a sort of nest of blankets and pillows in the middle of his bed, Tadashi's AI textbook on one side of him, a plate of day-old pastries from the cafe downstairs on the other. Across the room, 8tracks was whispering from his desktop, but Hiro wasn't paying attention to it.

He'd never programmed an AI before. His bots had never needed a personality - it had been the last thing he'd focused on. But Tadashi had built a real personality in Baymax, and it fascinated Hiro. They'd sort of both come to this understanding, at some point, that Hiro was the smarter of the two of them. It was hard to ignore, when he'd graduated high school the same year as his brother, even though Tadashi had skipped a grade himself, even though Hiro was four years younger. They never really talked about it. Hiro didn't feel the need to shove it in Tadashi's face, and if Tadashi had ever been jealous, he'd never shown it. Regardless, while Hiro had been building a bot that could take a beating and dish one out ten times as well, Tadashi had been making more advanced things. Hiro realized with dizzying clarity how right Tadashi had been to be annoyed with Hiro wasting his talent. He felt a sick emptiness forming a pit in his stomach, and set the cruller he'd been nibbling on back down on the plate.

Tadashi's book was well-written, clear, and towards the beginning, only had minimal note-taking inside. There was one part where Tadashi had underlined something about advances in implementing personality cores and written beside it, "Tell Hiro about this!". Hiro's eyes suddenly watered to where the words blurred together on the page and he leaned forward, resting his head against the book for a long, quiet moment.

He read for an hour, maybe more, not realizing how much time had passed until Aunt Cass was calling him for dinner. The pastries were still mostly untouched beside him, but a felt a little guilty for spoiling his appetite. He knew he'd given Cass hell over the last year, and he was genuinely _trying_ to make it up to her by being good. He went down to dinner without protest, abandoning his warm little circle of blankets. Cass had made pasta, and Hiro ate, listening to her chatter about the regulars to the cafe and their strange habits. One lady came every night and ordered a 16 ounce latte with twelve pumps of peppermint syrup. " _Twelve!_ " Cass cried. "Can she taste anything? Should we call a doctor? I'm worried about her. If there isn't something wrong with her tongue, it's something in her head!" After finishing, he excused himself, bounded back up the stairs, and dove back into his book.

Unfortunately, the text only got more dense as the book went on - figuratively as textbooks usually did, but literally, too. Tadashi's note-taking got more intense, and he'd added so much that there was almost no margin left. Most of it was progress notes on Baymax, but sometimes there were more personal things that made Hiro laugh. Or wonder why Tadashi wasn't making note of this in his phone or somewhere a little more useful. At one point, Tadashi had written _"I'm never going to get this right"_ , but it had been crossed out forcefully. Underneath it he'd written, in smaller, more cramped letters, _"what kind of example is that?"_.

At some point, between a condensed psychology lesson and an explanation of "branched reactions" Tadashi had notated as _"probably not important for beta round 1"_ , Hiro had drifted to sleep.

He didn't have a dream - that wasn't quite right. It was more like a realization or a decision his mind made when it was able to rest, somewhere in processing the day's events and filing the memories away. When Hiro awoke, the decision crept up on him - he was brushing his teeth when it began to cement in his mind.

He was going to use this book for something. Not microbots - those didn't need AI, needed to stay shelved. Not a fighter bot. He'd start by coding a personality he knew inside and out. Something he didn't have to creatively make up as he went along, but something whose parameters were already starkly laid out in his mind.

Hiro was going to make Tadashi.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get harder, then easier, then harder again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely scaggles for drawing [awesome fanart](http://scaggles.tumblr.com/post/114142041899/hi-ah-im-nervous-but-your-bh6-comic-inspired) for this fic!!!

There wasn't much going on that day. The first day of classes was still two days away. Hiro, as far as he knew, didn't have any super-villains terrorizing San Franksokyo to apprehend and eat up his time, so he was bored. He'd still gone through the whole morning routine - shower, brush teeth, get dressed, poke around at breakfast once the mint from the toothpaste had worn off - but he realized, not at all for the first time, that without school or bot-fighting, there wasn't anything for him to do. He needed a project.

His mind drifted back to the AI book and the decision he'd made earlier that morning, and he felt the beginnings of anxiety crawling up from his stomach, its tendrils curling around his ribs. With force, Hiro tried to shove them back down. He got up from the kitchen table (he was the only one there, Cass was downstairs with customers) and climbed up the stairs, heading straight to his computer. Hiro leaned back in his chair, interlaced his fingers, and stretched arms forward in front of himself, cracking his knuckles. He leaned forward fast, opening his program for coding (it color-coded and indented automatically, and that saved a lot of time) and stared at it for a moment.

And Hiro realized he had no idea where to even start.

Programming had always come so naturally to him. The parallels between this moment and when he was trying to come up with the idea for the microbots didn't escape him, but he didn't dwell on it. He tilted his head, frowned, and turned his chair around, looking at the red box sitting against the closet wall across from him - Baymax's housing unit.

"Ow, I hurt myself," he said in monotone. A moment later the unit initialized with a pleasant beep and Baymax appeared.

"Hello," he said, his hand moving in a wave. "I am Baymax, your personal--"

"Do you have to do that every time?" Hiro asked (not too annoyed), quirking a brow. He hopped up from his chair, crossing over to Baymax. "Hold up, I need to borrow this." He tapped on Baymax's access port and the round cylinder popped out, ejecting Tadashi's card. Without any programming, Baymax stood still and silent, and Hiro paused, a little unsettled for a moment before he turned back to his desk, sliding into his seat, popping the memory card into to adapter hooked up to his house-built computer.

It occurred to him that he'd never backed this up before, and now was probably a good time to do that. Hiro reached into a desk drawer, fumbled around for a moment, and pulled out two memory cards - on one, he copied Tadashi's data for Baymax wholesale, popped it out, and wrote "BAYMAX - BACKUP". On the other, he copied the same data, but didn't eject it just yet.

Starting from scratch was a terrible idea. Why bother when Tadashi had already written a skeleton for him? Baymax wasn't much like Tadashi, not... exactly, but if he started with code _Tadashi_ had written, instead of from scratch...

Hiro swallowed, hard. His throat was dry and he absently pawed at the mini-fridge under his desk, grabbing for a bottle of water.

By the time he'd started to familiarize himself with Baymax's code, he'd drained that bottle, a second, and then started in on the soda. He got up to pace a few times, code running through his head - he'd never been great at sitting for too long. By lunch time, he was starting to feel like he understood a little more - he'd already ripped out most of the medical protocol, but he felt like he still had a long way to go before he could get anywhere with this. Taking another break, he flopped onto his bed, sort of crawling up towards the head of the bed to stare out the window into the street below.

There were people everywhere down there - not surprising on a warm city day. Some people were coming towards the cafe, others hustled along in other directions, towards a downtown shopping district, towards a trolley stop, or away into grittier parts of the city (where most of Hiro's old bot fights had taken place). Some people moved with fast, brisk steps, while others walked idly. He'd never really looked at the different ways people moved before, and he realized he'd have to program all of Tadashi's movements, tweaking and re-tweaking and relying on his memory until he had them just right. The job seemed bigger and bigger with each passing moment and he let out a long, slow breath. He had the passing thought that he was deflating, like Baymax, and that was a little funny - almost enough for a laugh.

Maybe it would be easier to get Tadashi's personality right, then his voice, then his mannerisms. He could interact with Tadashi while building him, set up an IM client - they could talk like they were texting each other, then voice chat, then, finally...

Instead of being overwhelming, the thought was actually _inspiring_ now. Hiro sat up, went back to his computer, and worked.

For two days, he worked. Aunt Cass caught on and started bringing him food, and because he seemed so enthusiastic about what he was working on, she didn't even lecture him.

It was one AM the morning his classes were scheduled to start when Hiro felt like he'd made progress - enough to have, maybe, a very short conversation. He let out a breath, sat back for a moment, and then leaned forward and hit "Compile".

He hadn't coded a user-friendly IM interface - he didn't need one, but it would be nice to have to help the illusion. He'd focus on that later. For now, the screen sat blank, a Terminal window open, and Hiro sat there for a moment, his stomach crawling.

Finally, he typed.

_Hi, Tadashi. Are you there?_

Of course he was. He was lines of code, where else could he be? But Hiro sat there anyway, with bated breath, staring at the screen. The reply didn't come instantly, because he'd known to code in human-like delay.

_Hi Hiro._

Hiro felt his stomach drop through the floor and land probably somewhere in the cafe two stories below. His fingers tensed up - for a moment, he couldn't even type a reply. Finally, he managed: _I'm starting school tomorrow. Or this morning I guess. I have class in the morning._

_You'd better get to bed. I'm not taking you to school on the scooter when you miss your bus._

Hiro managed to get a hand over his mouth before he let out the noise that had only stuck in his throat for a moment - it was somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and he leapt forward, his other hand hitting the power switch on his computer before he could even think of safely shutting it down.

If it had been Tadashi, Hiro would have reminded him of rule #382 - a Hamada never left his brother hanging if he needed help, no matter what, and Tadashi would have laughed and said he didn't think the rule was supposed to be applied to this sort of situation - but this was too much. It was too raw. Hiro flopped into his bed, clutched his pillow, and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

 

 

The next conversation Hiro had with Tadashi was that morning, and Hiro made the mistake of asking how Tadashi was. The program crashed almost instantly, and his entire computer froze up before shutting down. Hiro rested his head in his hands for a full minute, half-dressed, his backpack open and sitting on his bed. That had been stupid. How could a computer program answer how it was feeling? It didn't have any understanding of emotion. Even Baymax had only the most cursory understanding of Hiro's emotional states, in relation to "treatment", and wouldn't know what to say if asked about his _own_ emotional state.

"Hiro!" Cass called, from the bottom of the stairs. "You'll miss the bus!"

Hiro groaned, pulled on his shirt, and grabbed his backpack, swinging down the stairs. He stopped at the shoe cubby and pulled his sneakers on, then stepped out through the cafe and into the street without a goodbye. He didn't miss his bus - which was good, because the last thing he needed was for his mood to tank even more than it already had. By the time he was in his first class, he'd convinced himself that Tadashi's entire programming needed to be re-hauled, and he wasn't even sure it was _worth_ it.

They went around the class, introducing themselves. None of the people Hiro knew were here - No Honey, GoGo, Wasabi... Which made sense, considering they'd already gone to SFIT for at least a year, and were probably on different tracks than he was. A girl across the classroom was standing to introduce herself, and Hiro watched in half-interest. Her name was Jacklyn Chung, she was a sophomore but she'd missed this class in her freshman year, her biggest project right now was a machine that scanned people's brains and interpreted the data there as code… practical application was creating more realistic artificial intelligence--

Hiro quickly sat up straighter. Jacklyn flushed, looking embarrassed, as if she felt like she'd talked too much, but Hiro wanted to tell her he didn't think she'd talked _enough_.

"Uhm, there's been some preliminary tests, but-- I'm always looking for more volunteers to be scanned! So if you want to, uh, talk to me..." She trailed off, smoothing her skirt, then sat back down. "That's all."

Hiro watched her until he realized it probably seemed like he was being super creepy and he looked away. When it came his turn to stand up and introduce himself, he was so distracted he almost didn't know what to say. The entire class was staring at him - they seemed to all already knew who he was.

He cleared his throat and got started.

"I'm, uh… Hiro Hamada," he said, and he waited for guys in the back to yell that Kindergarten was down the street - pretty much _prepared_ himself for it, wincing for a moment - but it never came. After a second, then three, Hiro blinked in surprise and looked around, incredulous.

This wasn't high school after all. Everyone was looking at him in interest, nobody seemed to be laughing at him for being fourteen years old. In high school, even in his senior classes he'd been younger than the freshmen, and that had opened him up to all kinds of torment - but maybe Callaghan had been right when he'd said _"your age wouldn't be an issue"_.

Hiro didn't want to think about Callaghan right now. Between his four hours of sleep, Tadashi's massive failure, and vague memories of nightmares he'd had the night before (the only real thing he could remember was the awful, oppressive heat), his mood was already close to faltering. He didn't want to tip the scale. He realized he'd been quiet for a while and nervously continued his introduction. "This is my first semester at SFIT. I'm… I'm mostly interested in robotics? And helping people. I'm continuing my brother's research on, uh, soft robotics. He made a nurse bot that can diagnose and treat medical problems, so-- I'm focused on that right now."

That was kind of a lie, but it was more acceptable than "I'm building an AI copy of my dead older brother because I can't live without him", so it worked. The teacher, an older lady named Professor Pearce, had her hands clasped in front of her.

"Your brother was Tadashi Hamada, right?" she asked. The whole class was staring at him, and Hiro just stared back. Her voice was filled with pity, and he suddenly wanted to get out of this classroom as fast as possible. Looking around at the rest of the students, everyone was staring at him - except Jacklyn, who was pointedly staring at her lap.

"Tadashi Hamada _is_ my brother," Hiro said, with force, because dying didn't erase lines on someone's family tree, right? The room was awkward, now, but he charged forward. Just like at the Tech Expo - once he'd gotten through the nervousness at the beginning, Hiro didn't have any trouble talking in front of a group of people. Why should he? He was smart and talented and they had no right to look at him with pity. He wasn't a child, even if he did look like one to them. "And he was going to do a lot of great things, but he died trying to help someone-- someone at this school. So now I'm going to do those great things for him. And if anybody wants to help me in beta testing Baymax who gets a scrape or has a cold, you can find me in his old lab. Otherwise, it's nice to meet everyone," he bowed, stiffly, then sat back down. His ears were burning red, heat across his face. The girl in the seat next to him cleared her throat awkwardly, then started her own introduction, but Hiro wasn't listening to them anymore.

When he managed to look up, he realized that Jacklyn was staring at him. He stared back, swallowed, and finally grabbed for his notebook, starting to doodle idly to keep his hands busy. When class was over, Hiro almost flew out of his chair, but a quiet _"Hiro"_ stopped him. He half-expected it was the teacher, there to tell him that if he needed extra time on assignments or to talk to the school counselor she could understand - but it wasn't. It was Jacklyn Chung.

She was holding her books together in two arms, pressed against her chest, and she looked embarrassed. The other students were grabbing their things and leaving around them. Hiro took a step closer so he could hear whatever she wanted to say over the noise.

"Do you have a class to get to?" she asked.

"Oh…" Hiro shook his head, almost too quickly. "No. Uh, not for another hour."

"Uhm," She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, then tilted her head, "would you come by my lab with me? I think there's something you should see."

She led the way, and Hiro followed - Jacklyn's lab was in a different building than Hiro's and the rest of his friends. Jacklyn passed the main room, where most of the experiments were, and down a tight side hallway where some students were granted separate rooms. Hiro had taken over Tadashi's without an application, but nobody had had the heart to tell him you technically weren't supposed to even be able to apply for one until after your first year, and even then, you had to write a good proposal.

Jacklyn's lab was small, but clean. There didn't seem to be any robotics, just computers. Big ones. There was a large chair in the far corner with a helmet sitting in it - an array of wires and connectors were coming from the helmet, and Hiro could see neural transmitters hooked up underneath it.

"Is this your AI research?" he asked. It didn't make sense - why would Jacklyn want to talk to him? He was in robotics, he didn't even say anything that would have prompted this, _he'd_ been the one who'd wanted to talk to _her_ \--

"Yeah." She sat her books and bag down in a heap in her chair, and Hiro appreciated that while her lab looked clean, it seemed like she probably had to work hard to keep that way - she wasn't a strict, neat person right off the bat. Just like him! "Uhm. I know you're probably confused--" She paused, then shook her head, and a sheaf of black hair moved over her face. She tucked it away again with quick fingers. "Remember how I asked for volunteers?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You want to scan me?"

She threw her hands up, flushing. "No! Not like that-- I mean, if you want to, that's-- No." She smiled, a little thinly, took a long pause, and then started again. "Your brother, Tadashi. He was a robotics guy like you, but he was really supportive of my project. Last year I was just getting started, and he was just starting his uhm, nurse thing, and…"

Hiro was trying to connect the dots, but for such a brilliant mind, he could sometimes be a little obtuse.

"Tadashi was the first person I scanned for my project, is what I mean," Jacklyn said, finally. "The scanner was still-- really new, so there's a lot of problems with the scan, but… after what happened… I mean, I didn't want to hang on to that data without asking you."

Hiro couldn't believe this. He wasn't surprised Tadashi had helped her - he was always saying he'd tested out new tech when he'd come home from school, and always trying to tell Hiro about it even though Hiro had just ignored him and continued trying to better his fighter bot. He had the feeling, actually, that this was the first of many times over the next year or so he was going to hear people telling him that Tadashi had helped them with their projects. But Jacklyn was telling him that she had a scan of Tadashi's entire brain, that her entire project was using those scans to create AI, and she was asking _him_ what to do with the data.

"Can you give it to me?" he asked. "I mean-- a copy, at least? I don't… Tadashi gave it to you, so I don't mind if you use it. He wanted to help you, but…"

Jacklyn looked surprised. This clearly wasn't the reaction she'd expected. She watched him for a moment and then nodded.

Turning towards her computer, Jacklyn booted it up, grabbed for a free card, and inserted it in the computer's port. After a long moment, she began copying the data, then spun around on her chair, her hands folded in her lap.

"It's going to take a while to copy," she said, as if in apology.

"That's okay," Hiro said, a little too enthusiastically. To fill the space, they talked, slowly at first, about Jacklyn's tech. She seemed a little shy - but once they were talking about her work, she quickly came alive. Hiro could follow along pretty well, surprisingly enough, and he started trying to ask questions about how, exactly, the scans were translated into AI. Jacklyn answered fairly easily, but the process didn't sound easy at all. It was a lot of interpreting psychology and code and making nebulous things more quantifiable, and Hiro was pretty sure this was going to be a massive project.

But he had _Tadashi_. 

"A lot of people seem bothered by this project," Jacklyn said, after a moment of silence. Hiro blinked, tilting his head.

"Why?"

"Because… I guess it makes people think about the soul too much," she admitted. "I believe in the soul, but I think that all of our personalities are contained within our brain, too. Some people think I'm trying to say I can create copies of people's souls, and… I guess that bothers some people."

"It isn't the same," Hiro said, quietly. Jacklyn nodded, then there was a soft chime behind her. The file transfer was done. She turned her chair, popped the card out, and handed it to Hiro. "I hope having this helps," she said. He took it, nodding.

"Yeah. Thank you. Uh-- if you ever want to come by and see Baymax--"

"Sure." She smiled, and Hiro felt for a moment like maybe he was _flirting_ and he snatched his bag and nearly tripped over himself to get out of the room. He didn't mean it like that. Hopefully she didn't take it that way. What 19 year old girl would want to flirt with a 14 year old kid anyway? Hiro stammered out a goodbye and was gone.

He still had class in half an hour, but he didn't care. First days were easy to miss anyway.

Right now, the only thing on his mind was the memory card tucked carefully away in his backpack. He raced home, slipped through the lunch rush at the cafe so that Aunt Cass _probably_ hadn't seen him come in, and went upstairs.

It took a few minutes for his computer to reboot, and while it was, Hiro paced the room, the memory card in his hands. He stared at it, even though it wasn't that interesting - just a blank white card with nothing written on the label.

He'd have to start over with this, but that was okay. This was a part of Tadashi. He'd given it himself. Hiro felt his stomach flopping in his body and he forced himself to sit down the edge of his bed, watching his computer come to life.

Once it did, Hiro inserted the card and got to work interpreting the code Jacklyn had created. She'd spent a year creating her machine - he hoped, desperately, that it wouldn't take him that long to figure it out.

No way it would. There was a Hamada brothers rule somewhere that said that they could do anything together, wasn't there? Hiro could do this. He had to.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it probably becomes contextually apparent that I also write Ace Attorney fanfic. Also if you know anything about like... science.... or robotics... I'm really sorry about my technobabble. I tried, there was an attempt. I mean, I googled things.

Under California law, CA penal code RC594 - "Criminal Mischief" - had fairly varying degrees of severity, but it was always taken seriously. Robert Callaghan had been told by his lawyer over and over again how lucky he was that his "little psychotic break at Krei Tech", as he liked to put it, hadn't killed anyone - and while Robert sometimes wanted to punch the man when he said it, he did have to agree with the overall point.

The thought of living with that guilt scared him. Justifying Tadashi's death as the boy's own fault was easier. He'd seen the danger - he'd made his informed decision. (Robert tried very hard to remind himself of this every night in his holding cell.)

With California's revamped legal system to allow for speedier trials, he'd gone to trial before the cleanup on the Krei Tech building had even started. Well, considering he'd pled guilty, he hadn't exactly gone to _trial_ \- but there had been hearings and sentencing just the same. Inescapable legal bullshit.

Due to his high standing in the community, his lack of any previous offences of any kind, ever, and his lawyer's insistence at "diminished mental state" due to the loss of his daughter (which wasn't, Robert was told, actually a valid legal defense since 2002, but that didn't stop attorneys from _heavily_ implying it in everything from murder cases to traffic violations), Robert was only sentenced to jail for six months. Half the recommended sentence. His lawyer acted like it was a victory, but Robert wasn't so sure. The investigation into the explosion at SFIT was still ongoing, but he knew it would be traced back to him, and once it was, there would be more hearings and more sentencing. Criminal mischief was a misdemeanor, but arson? Arson leading to death? That was a felony, and it was ten years to life.

Jail was terrible - but the most interesting thing had been that there'd been a malfunction with the installed robotics that managed the electric locking system. Some of the cells couldn't be opened, so the prison capacity had been heavily diminished.

"Warden's too damn much of a penny-pincher to fix much of anything broken around here," he heard a guard complain, and he couldn't help but chime in.

I could fix it," he said, casually enough. "For free. I've already seen it in action. I believe there's a problem with the servomechanism. There must be faulty encoding. The system uses heterostatis to--"

They'd shut him up pretty fast, uninterested in his explanation - but by the end of the day he was working, squat next to a servomotor with his sleeves rolled up, a rubber wrench, and only _two_ armed guards behind him. That was something. It took Robert only twenty-two minutes to diagnose and fix the problem, and another three to put everything back in place. From that moment on, he began grooming a reputation. When the system that regulated water temperature broke, Robert fixed it. When the bot that scanned prisoners' irises when letting them in and out from the yard broke, Robert fixed it. When the camera system mysteriously seized up, Robert fixed it.

And each time, there were fewer and fewer precautions taken. Among the guards and the staff, at least, Robert was well-liked - and when he offered to fix a cell phone that a prisoner had been able to smuggle in, he started to gain popularity there, too.

In the last year, there were three things Robert had learned:

1\. How to be stealthy and lay low (after all, he'd pretended to be dead for months);  
2\. The San Fransokyo County Prison's camera system and its blind spots; and  
3\. How the cell door locking system worked.

Armed with this knowledge, Robert Callaghan escaped the county jail after only ninety-three days behind bars.

 

 

During this time, Hiro was making an incredible amount of progress. It took him a month of solid work to sort through Jacklyn's scan, and another to implement it into what he'd already written - but the next time he booted up Tadashi to have a conversation, they did it through "video chat". Hiro gave Tadashi access to his webcam, so Tadashi could "see" him, and Hiro could see the virtual model he'd programmed for Tadashi.

The moment the feed clicked on, and Tadashi stared back at him, Hiro took in a sharp breath.

"Hi, Tadashi," he squeaked, finally. Of all the times for his voice to crack? If Baymax had been active, he probably would have told him it was another part of "puberty". Uhg.

"Hey, nerd," Tadashi answered. His voice sounded casual and lightly teasing. Hiro was almost certain he was dreaming. "I haven't talked to you in a while."

Hiro was momentarily alarmed by this, but decided to play it off. (Still, how had Tadashi realized that?) "It's because I don't want to look at your ugly face," Hiro countered, grinning. He was _grinning_. Tadashi laughed, just a little.

"Well, hopefully I can come home soon," he said. "Then you'll have to look at it all the time."

The grin faltered a little, because this conversation was getting in to dangerous territory - what if Tadashi wanted to know where he was, or why he wasn't home? What if it caused another massive failure? Hiro struggled to find something else to talk about - _anything._

"Uhm, Baymax is-- Baymax needs some work," he said, finally. "So you better take a look at him when you can. He's out of bandages, too. There's a lot of room in there, I think the storage space could be bigger."

"Why, are you hurting yourself a lot?" Tadashi cocked an eyebrow at him, looking almost skeptical - but Hiro couldn't help but feel like all of these emotions were just displays (which of course they were - he knew that, he did), but it was too easy to see that they were displays. There was something fundamentally off somewhere, but he couldn't place it. It gave him chills he tried to ignore. "Don't tell me you're going botfighting again."

"What?" Hiro actually looked surprised, staring at the image of Tadashi with reluctance. Tadashi was looking directly at him, in the way that people normally videochatting didn't, because for humans, looking directly into the camera instead of at the image you were seeing was unnatural. "No! I don't have time to go bot fighting anymore," he said, and he must have sounded sincere enough because Tadashi visibly relaxed. "I have way too much homework."

"Oh yeah?" Tadashi grinned a little. "That's true. Do you have a class with Callaghan? He really lays it on."

For a second, Hiro had a flash of memory to their first conversation - when he hadn't been able to handle Tadashi, and he'd rushed to shut off the computer. His hand twitched but he kept still.

"No," he said, and it was so flat that Tadashi looked confused. That emotion may have actually been genuine. Hiro's reaction wasn't computing with the parameters and understandings that Tadashi was coded with, and his programming was trying to make sense of the difference.

Hiro looked Tadashi over for a while, just... watching him. He looked just right. The only thing missing was his hat... Hiro had left that out on purpose. It was quiet for a while, and then Hiro decided, cautiously, to test something. "What's the last thing you remember, before this?"

Tadashi blinked, slowly. Thinking-- no, processing. "You mean before our other conversations?" he asked. Hiro nodded. Tadashi looked thoughtful.

"It was the middle or end of March, because everyone was talking about how the cherry blossoms were going to bloom in a couple weeks. I was working on Baymax, you were getting into trouble as usual, and I was doing a lot of overtime at school helping people with their projects. I helped someone casting silicone for a bot, someone who couldn't get the 3D printer to cooperate with them, and then I was about to go back to my lab when I got asked to do a brain scan for someone." He shrugged. "Sorry. Nothing really eventful happened that day, so it doesn't stick out much."

Hiro nodded again, listening in rapt attention. So the brain scan was the last thing Tadashi remembered. So his memory had been scanned in too, right up to the last moment. It was kind of fascinating, but… Tadashi had died just a month after the cherry blossom festivals all over town. Spring was ending and summer was about to begin. He was missing … a month and a half from his memory?

 _From his databank,_ Hiro corrected himself.

"I gotta go, Tadashi," he said, finally. "Uh. Homework. I'll talk to you later."

"Alright." Tadashi smiled. Hiro was reaching for the mouse to close the program when Tadashi's voice stopped him. "Hey-- Hiro."

"…Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're working so hard. I'm proud of you. I guess I don't say that, but it's true."

Hiro stared at him for a moment, feeling a warmth spreading through his chest. It felt like it was blooming there, like a bud unwrapping its petals. Soon the sensation was moving into his face, and his eyes welled up with tears. "Shut up, nerd," he murmured. "Who says that?"

"Yeah, yeah." Tadashi smiled. "Goodnight, Hiro."

 

 

The next day all throughout class, Hiro drew up drafts for Tadashi's skeleton - it would be the same material as Baymax, with all cords and wiring hidden underneath silicone skin. He needed to be careful to make everything as light as possible, because all together, it was going to be heavy, but he didn't want it to be considerably heavier than Tadashi. That would be pretty difficult to pull off.

He'd already decided it needed to have at least some kind of simplistic nerve system. Hiro didn't need Tadashi to be able to feel _pain_ , or changes in temperature, but the sensation of pressure when being touched was important. Hiro wanted Tadashi to react when he was grabbed or touched or tapped or... fist bumped. Without that, he wouldn't be very realistic.

It seemed like every moment he thought of this, more and more issues came up in his head. He tried to make a note of all of them, but it was starting to get overwhelming. No better way to beat back that feeling that getting started, right?

...Right.

Five hours after class had let out, Hiro was at his wit's end. It was eight o'clock now, and his stomach was protesting, but all he could think about was getting the basic skeleton together. He'd gotten a headstart, but he needed to make sure the joints could work as smoothly as possible without needing too much maintenance, because getting back to them once the wiring and skin was on would be impossible. Okay, really difficult.

In a tense moment of frustration, Hiro kicked his toolbox, and it went tumbling across the floor. Pain burst through his toes and wrenches, screwdrivers, and bits of metal scattered everywhere. The action had made a satisfyingly loud noise, but Hiro only had a moment to appreciate it before there was a hesitant knock at his door.

"Hiro?" a voice called. They way his name had been pronounced meant it was definitely Honey. Hiro groaned - not because he didn't want to see his friends, but because he wasn't entirely ready to deal with people right now.

The door opened and Honey (looking timid), Wasabi (looking nervous), and Gogo (looking annoyed) were somehow all standing in the doorway together. For a long moment, Hiro just stared at them.

"Are you okay?" Honey asked, finally. "Uh! We heard noise, so…" She shrugged, smiling.

"What a mess," Wasabi murmured, then looked instantly embarrassed. "I-I mean, it's your space," he clarified. "Whatever!"

"You building something?" Gogo asked. Her gaze was past Hiro, on the robotic skeleton hanging inside. Hiro flushed.

"Oh, uh-- yeah, I was thinking about it."

Gogo pushed in past him, and Honey followed. Hiro stepped out of the way with a sigh to let Wasabi in, too.

"This the same material Ta-- that Baymax is made from," Honey noted, tilting her head. She was standing next to the skeleton, bent slightly at the knees to examine it, a finger pressed to her bottom lip. "Are you doing improvements on Baymax?"

"What?" Hiro was alarmed at the idea. "No! Uh, I was thinking of a companion," he said. Gogo crossed her arms, staring at him.

"A companion to a healthcare companion?" she asked.

"W-well, I mean…" Hiro struggled for a response. "Nurses work with doctors in real life, right? So… why not have two robots working in a team?"

"Makes sense to me," Wasabi said. He was picking up the contents of Hiro's toolbox, putting everything back where it belonged. "So what's the problem?"

"Ooh, yeah!" Honey cheered, pumping her fist in the air. She bounced with excitement, and Hiro wondered how she could manage to jump in high heels. If he'd tried that, Baymax would be treating a really nasty sprain. Maybe two. "Brainstorming session!! Let's do it!"

"We helped with Baymax," Wasabi said. "A little. So maybe we can help with this one!"

"You helped Tadashi?" Hiro asked. For a moment, all three looked uncomfortable, but the moment quickly passed. "What did he--"

"Did I hear 'brainstorm'?" Fred asked. Hiro turned to see him at the doorway, leaning casually against the frame. He suddenly held up his phone, hit a button, and a cheesy thunder sound effect cracked from the tinny speaker. "Hell yeah, let's do this!"

"You aren't going to help," Gogo said. "You'll tell him to put laser eyes on it."

"Lasers is way more Wasabi's thing than mine," Fred said, affecting a pout. "I have a better idea. Let's have this brainstorming session--" He hit the button again, punctuating the phrase with another cheesy storm sound, "--out at Petey Tsuda's!"

Hiro knew the place well enough - it was a pretty trendy noodle restaurant just off campus that stayed open late to cater to the students. Tadashi used to bring him food from there all the time. The mention of it made his stomach kind of growl. Yakisoba sounded pretty good…

"Hiro's trying to work!" Honey protested, but Hiro grinned, waving a hand.

"No no, let's do it!" he said.

"Hell yeah!" Fred seized Hiro in a hug. "That's my _man_!"

Chattering, the group wandered from Hiro's lab, off campus, and towards the restaurant. Hiro felt… good. Really good! When he'd first seen the three of them in his doorway, he'd… kind of been scared. He hadn't really been socializing much. With everything he was trying to do, he'd gotten distant. But it was important to maintain these connections, wasn't it? Besides, they were a team. If anything bad ever happened again, they'd have to defend San Fransokyo together! Hiro didn't even have to question if they felt the same way.

He wished, at one point during the night (between Fred getting a noodle stuck in his throat and Hiro trying to get Honey's input on the most life-like material for skin), that he could tell them what he was doing… but there was no way he'd ever be able to do that. 

When Hiro got home that night, he flopped into bed with a happy sigh, then turned his head to eye the divider between his space and Tadashi's. Maybe soon that space wouldn't be so empty.

…As long as he could keep Aunt Cass downstairs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the update delay! I'm still here, still writing!

Abigail Callaghan had had a difficult time since waking up from her stasis pod. She'd lost two years of her life and had been declared legally dead - her employment had been terminated, her boyfriend had started seeing other people, her really cute downtown apartment had been cleaned and rented out - but maybe worst of all, her dad had lost his grip completely.

There hadn't been an official conviction yet in the matter of the fire at SFIT, and the explosion that had killed a student, but there was a pretty general consensus among the public, and she heard about it every day. Whether it was reporters outside of the apartment with cameras or a frowning cashier with a rude comment when she handed over her bank card, Abigail was made painfully aware of her father's guilt and the public's opinion of the probably soon upcoming second trial nearly every single day.

It made it incredibly hard to get a date, she thought wryly, and then wished that was the biggest impact it was having on her life.

There'd been a lot of changes she'd had to make since coming back - finding a new place, getting everything moved in, finding a new _job_ \- and with her dad in jail, she’d suddenly had to manage _his_ affairs, too, which kind of put hers on halt. Krei had apologetically offered her another position at his company (a better position, in fact, she’d realized with some wry amusement) and she'd taken it, even though she had two years of tech to catch up on, but finding a new place to live was a little more complicated… so she'd been staying in her father’s apartment.

It was only a little unsettling. He'd always had a guest room, so she'd set herself up there, but the place was definitely his. This wasn't the home she'd grown up in, and it was strange and unfamiliar but filled with familiar things. She tried to stay out of it as much as possible - which was, with her work schedule, not too difficult.

That afternoon, though, she'd left work early - there were issues with an experiment and the power for the entire building had blown, which meant everyone had to go home early. Abigail headed home, already thinking of how she’d fill the rest of her night. Maybe there was something good on Netflix. She had, after all, a whole lot of entertainment to catch up on too.

 

 

That same afternoon, Hiro was pacing a line up and down the garage "lab" Cass had set up for him, trying hard not to look at the completed robot - android? - standing unmoving only five feet away.

He'd built Tadashi at SFIT for a while, but he realized very quickly that the lab wasn't quite secure enough for what he needed to do. People would come in and out of his room way too often, which… he appreciated them there, honest! But if he kept Tadashi there, it was only a matter of time before it would become clear what he was doing, and… he didn’t want to upset any of them. Tadashi was their friend too.

…And a part of him was terrified that someone would decide what he was doing was wrong, or unhealthy, and take Tadashi away from him.

Luckily, Aunt Cass never came down to the garage, and Hiro had been able to work almost uninterrupted on Tadashi. He'd even been sleeping on the red couch in the back, dozing in short fits that were, more often than not, plagued with nightmares.

Now, though, Tadashi was ready to be activated for the first time. He was finished. Hiro had put the final touches on him, he'd tested the cameras in Tadashi's eyes, he'd tested the voice output (it was perfect), he'd tweaked and re-tweaked and prolonged this moment for as long as possible - because now that he was standing there only moments away from the finish line, with Tadashi's hat clasped in both hands, he was finding he couldn't _do_ this.

Tadashi was just standing there, wearing his brother's old clothes, his eyes closed, unmoving. Deathly still - he didn’t sway slightly; there was no soft rising and falling in his chest. Hiro could feel his chin start to shake like he was going to cry and he grit his teeth together, but it didn't stop his breath from shuddering.

He'd worked too hard on this not to follow through. He couldn't leave this robot just standing here in his garage forever, feeling torn about what he'd do about it. He stopped pacing, turned, and moved quickly up towards Tadashi, reaching up and pressing the small button on the back of his neck, right at his hairline. He scurried backwards, holding his breath as the android that looked almost identical to his brother booted up.

When Tadashi's eyes opened, Hiro dropped the hat and pressed his hand over his mouth.

"Hey you," Tadashi said, then he smiled. "Looks like I'm finally home."

Hiro couldn't speak for a moment. He nodded, then suddenly bent to swipe up the hat from the floor. He held it out to Tadashi, trying to pretend he couldn't see it shaking in his grasp. This was definitely not how he pictured this moment.

"You--" Hiro said, slowly, then realized almost suddenly that he'd never addressed the fact that Tadashi's memory stopped on the day he'd gotten the brain scan from Jacklyn. There was nothing after that. What did Tadashi think he'd done? Where did he think he'd been? Hiro licked his lips, trying desperately to figure out what to say. "Something happened," he said, finally.

Tadashi looked concerned, but he nodded. "I kind of figured that." He paused, then, "Everything okay?"

It was something so ordinary, but Hiro couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle the likeness of his dead brother asking him if he was okay. He backed up more, shook his head, and then turned and ran out of the garage, taking off down the street.

He didn't know where he needed to be, but it wasn't there. He didn’t know what he could do, but he knew he couldn't do this.

Tadashi stood there for a long moment - a moment longer, maybe, than his human counterpart would have - before he pulled the hat on and sighed. Something was wrong with Hiro, that much was for sure. Finding out what that was and where he'd run off to seemed like the most important thing he could think of to do.

When Tadashi stepped out of the garage and onto familiar streets of San Franksokyo, the first thing he did was check for his phone. It would be easiest to find Hiro if Tadashi could track _Hiro's_ phone as usual - but he patted his pockets and realized it wasn’t there. That set him, instead, heading down the street. He was calculating a million different ways Hiro could have gone and narrowing down the most likely - but thinking that way didn't surprise him. It felt natural. If something was abnormal in that functioning, Tadashi didn't notice it at all.

He was so set on his course, in fact, that he didn't notice much of anything until he wandered a little off-course and somebody on a bike clipped past him, a tire skidding over his shoe. Tadashi felt the pressure, but not the pain - but the person on the bike nearly toppled into the street.

"Hey! Bike lane!" she called, looking up incredulously. She'd fallen off her bike, but she hadn't scraped anything too badly. Abigail glared up at the offender but as soon as she saw his face, her expression quickly changed.

She knew that face. She'd been catching up with the news reports and she knew the face of the kid who her father had probably (inadvertently) killed, and that was _this_ face. Tadashi Hamada? What the hell was he doing alive?

But they'd thought her father was dead too, didn't they? They'd put his picture out at the memorials and vigils too, hadn't they?

Abigail gaped at him, and Tadashi laughed nervously.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, putting his hands up. "Uh, I'm just— sorry, I'd better run! Brother on the loose!" He'd already wasted enough time, after all, and Hiro was probably halfway towards the bad side of the city by now. He turned, jogged down an alleyway, and was gone. Abigail watched him go, because what the hell else could she do?

She was too flabbergasted to give chase. Instead, after a moment had passed, and then another, and then a disgruntled driver honked at her to get herself out of half of the car lane and she forced herself back onto her bike and peddled away.

She had no idea what to make of this news. When she got home, she pulled her jacket off, discarded it on the floor, and approached her father's whiskey cabinet for the first time.

 

 

It took Tadashi an hour to find Hiro (sixty-two minutes and twenty-four seconds, actually, if he wanted to be exact, and he did) at a park they'd played at when they were kids. Hiro was sitting at a park bench, staring out over the park and back into the city beyond. He didn't look like he was focusing on anything in particular - but when Tadashi laid a hand on his shoulder from behind, Hiro _jumped_ , jerked forward to turn his head over his shoulder, and then nearly fell from the park bench in his scramble to his feet.

"What are you _doing_ here?" he gasped. This was bad. This was bad. Gogo could bike by at any time. Anyone who recognized Tadashi could be anywhere. There were so many people around, and--

Tadashi smiled a little. "Didn't mean to scare you," he said, putting his hands up. "What's got you so jumpy?"

" _You can't be here,_ " Hiro insisted, because he honestly didn't know what else to say. What else could he even tell Tadashi? 'You're actually dead and if anyone sees you it's going to be a huge deal'? He clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling anxiety flaring in his chest and constricting his throat. Tadashi was staring at him with unprocessed confusion, and Hiro caught himself thinking it was _real_ emotion for a moment before pushing that thought away.

What the hell had he done? _How_ had he even done this?

"Don't want your big brother chasing after you anymore?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow. "You don't mind when I'm saving you from crazed bot-fighters with a grudge."

"I'm not bot-fighting right now!" Hiro said, defensive, throwing his hands out as if to display the relative safety of the park around them. ...It didn't work so well, he thought, when he didn't feel like the park was safe at all. "Please, _please_ , can we just go home?"

Tadashi didn't understand what Hiro's problem was - but he nodded anyway. "You're the one who ran off," he pointed out, but casually pushed hands into his jean pockets. Hiro quickly moved to walk beside him, as they started out of the park. Hiro wondered if he could take them down smaller streets or if Tadashi would be confused. This was such a mess. This was such a mess.

He couldn't expect Tadashi to live in a lab or a garage forever. But what the hell was he supposed to tell him in the meantime?

 

 

He'd only moved at night, because at this point his absense had been noticed and the police would be on the look-out for him. Night in the city wasn't much safer than day time with all the people out and about, but darkness and alleyways afforded him some measure of cover, and he knew the city fairly well. He knew where he was going even better.

The door key was something he didn't have on him - but when you live in an apartment long enough, you learn the building's quirks. For example - the fact that the door leading off the tiny cramped laundry room to the fire escape would open if it was jiggled the right way. It wasn't until he was on the fire escape that he noticed that the light was on - the light in his guest room, of all places. Someone was in his apartment.

He had a good idea of who it could be (of who he _hoped_ it could be), and his pace quickened on the stair. When he opened the door, he did it as quietly as he could, and crept out from the laundry room into the living room.

Under his foot, a floorboard squeaked, and the woman at the old radio on the bookshelf turned, startled. The glass of whiskey in her hand dropped to the floor as her muscles loosened in shock, but it surprisingly did not shatter. Its contents spilled out and the glass rolled in a half-circle across the floor before coming to a stop.

For the second time that day, Abigail stared in horror at someone she did not expect to see. To be honest? The surprises were getting a little old.

" _Dad_?" she squeaked. She ran through a series of information in her head. Her father's parole date, which wasn't for another year, for example. Her mouth suddenly felt dry, and she wished she'd been drinking water instead.

"Abigail," he said, softly, in a breath that was like a sigh of relief. He approached her, but she cringed back, involuntarily - she hadn't realized what she'd done, but he had. He halted, suddenly, drawing up steps away. The glass lay uselessly on its side at his feet. "Abigail--" He said her name again, in a different, short tone this time. His expression wasn't relief and warmth and the joy of reunion anymore - it was confusion, incomprehension, the touches of anger. "Why aren't you--"

"You're supposed to be in jail," she said slowly. She tried very hard to keep her voice from quivering. "You shouldn't be here. Why are you here?"

" _Abigail_ ," he said, and this time her name was in the tone parents used when trying to make small children understand that they needed to eat their vegetables - something irritated, impatient. "I didn't need to be in that place. There was no-- I came here to find _you_. I did all of this, all of this for you--"

That was the last thing she wanted to hear. Abigail's hands went to her head, clutching in her hair. "Don't say that!" she cried. "You-- someone _died_ because of what you did! Why would you think I would want that? Why would you--"

But was he dead? She'd seen his face, just that day, hadn't she? Abigail laughed a short sort of bark, her eyes were welling up and her face felt hot. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She needed to find some way to call the police. She needed to do something. He wouldn't hurt _her_ , she just needed to get this situation back under control.

"It's okay," she said, half to him, half to herself. "It's okay. It's okay. He isn't dead. Just like you! Just-- they said you were dead, and he was dead! But you're not, and he's not--"

The look that crossed her father's face was one Abigail was sure she'd never seen before, and that scared her even more.

"What?" he asked, suddenly. "What do you mean, he's not?"

"I saw him today," Abigail said, forcefully. "I saw him! You're not dead-- he's not dead-- but you, you're dangerous, you can't be here, you--" She took a step back, then another, her hand flying behind her to paw wildly at the edge of the bookshelf for where she'd left her phone. "I'm calling the police," she said.

Robert flew forward, his hands seizing Abigail's arms.

"You saw him," he repeated. " _Where_?" Abigail stared back up at her father in shock, but not fear. He would never hurt her. She knew that like she knew how to breathe.

But he was dangerous to other people. His anger could get out of control. His emotions could ruin him. He _could_ kill - even if he somehow, some way, hadn't. Had he? She was doubting everything now.

"Just, on the street somewhere," she breathed. "Around Fifteenth and Mangetsu..." Tears were finally moving past her eyelids and down her cheeks. "Dad. You're going to _hurt_ someone."

With a great deal of effort, Robert summoned up every scrap of restraint he had and moved Abigail aside. He turned, exiting the apartment, leaving her standing there on shaking legs, her phone forgotten again.

She didn't call the police for twenty minutes. By that time, Robert Callaghan was already making his way across San Franksokyo.


End file.
